— Historian, Author, Soldier, Teacher, Public Servant, and Designer of the Canadian Flag —

Biography

B
orn in Calgary on 6 July 1907, George Francis Gillman Stanley was
educated in Calgary and received a B.A. from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He went to Oxford University in 1929 as the Rhodes Scholar
from Alberta, and at Oxford earned a B.A., M.A., M.Litt. and D.Phil.,
and held a Beit Fellowship in Imperial Studies and a Royal Society of
Canada Scholarship. He also played for the Oxford University Ice Hockey
Club which won the Spengler Cup in 1931.

G
eorge Stanley returned to Canada in 1936 to be professor of history at
Mount Allison University and head of the history department. He was on
the staff of that university until 1946, although from 1940 to 1946 he
was on military leave.

S
tanley had joined the military upon arriving in New Brunswick. He
qualified as a lieutenant in
the New Brunswick Rangers and is still an active member of the
Association of that regiment which ceased to exist in 1947. He
served as an infantry training officer in Fredericton and then
proceeded overseas to be an historian in the Historical Section at Canadian Army Headquarters in London. Among his numerous responsibilities were the Canadian War Artists. He became Deputy-Director
of the Section and was discharged as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1947
in Vancouver. He came out of retirement to help fight floods in
the Fraser Valley in 1948 and was on the Reserve of Officers
until 1967.

A
t the University of British Columbia (1947-1949), Stanley held
the first ever chair in Canadian history in Canada. Awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship, he went to Ottawa in 1949 to do research
into the history of Canadian government policy in dealing with
native people. This work resulted in a series of articles which
have frequently been reprinted and used as sources for further
research.

I
n 1949 Stanley was appointed head of the history department at
the Royal Military College and he served in this capacity for
twenty years and as the first Dean of Arts (1962-1969). He
became a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1950 and
received the Society's Tyrrell Medal for history in 1957. At
the Royal Military College, he taught the first undergraduate
course in military history ever given in Canada. Twenty years
of R.M.C. graduates passed through his classes; he taught most
of the senior officers in Canada's Defence Forces, including
several Chiefs of Staff. In 1989 when he retired from his post
as Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, a testimonial dinner
was given in his honour at Gagetown, and the guests at the
head table were all Canadian generals, who had flown in to
honour their former professor! Many of his former students
have achieved distinction as professional historians.

S
tanley's The Birth of Western Canada was first published in
1936, reprinted in the 1960s and was reissued in 1992 - 55 years
after its original appearance! It remains the classic account of the
Riel Rebellions. At R.M.C., Stanley wrote Canada's Soldiers
because he needed a textbook for cadets studying Canadian military history. This
became required reading for every service person for three decades.
During his Kingston period, he also wrote In the
Face of Danger, New France: The Last Phase, Louis Riel
(a definitive biography), The Story of Canada's Flag, A Short
History of the Canadian Constitution, and edited In Search
of the Magnetic North, For Want of a Horse and several
volumes for the Royal Society of Canada.

A
fter twenty years at the Royal Military College, Stanley returned to
Mount Allison University in 1969 to set up the first programme in
Canadian Studies at a Canadian university. Here he taught trail-
blazing courses in "Canadian civilization" dealing with literature,
music, architecture and culture. Here he wrote Canada Invaded,
1775-1776 and a short history of The Military and Hospitaller
Order of St. Lazarus. He served as a member of the Commission de
Planification Académique de l'Université de Moncton
(1969-1972), and as a member of the advisory panel to the Symons
Commission on Canadian Studies (1972-1975). He was a founding member
of the Atlantic Canada Institute. He also served as a member of the
Federal Government Advisory Board on Canadian Military Colleges
(1973-1979), on the council of the New Brunswick Army Cadet League
and of the Maritime Automobile Association, and as president of the
New Brunswick Council of St. John Ambulance. He was a director of
the Canadian Association of Rhodes Scholars (1983-1987) and of SEVEC,
and continued his long-standing role as corresponding member of the
Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique française.

S
tanley retired from Mount Allison in 1975 but continued to do research
and write. He produced his War of 1812: Land Operations. In 1982
he became Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick and served in this
capacity until 1987. Stanley's term of office brought a hectic
schedule of public engagements throughout the province as New
Brunswickers celebrated various bicentennials. As well as receiving
the Pope and hosting numerous visiting diplomats and political
leaders, Stanley also entertained most members of the Royal Family.
While Lieutenant-Governor, he continued to act as General Editor of
The Collected Writings of Louis Riel in five volumes, which
appeared in 1985 after seven years of work by five Canadian scholars.

A
fter completing his term as New Brunswick's twenty-fifth Lieutenant-
Governor since
Confederation, Stanley returned to his home in Sackville and resumed
his scholarly and civic
activities. He served as a member of the Advisory Board on the
Canadian War Museum (1988-1990). In 1989, he published Toil
and Trouble, the story of the 1870 military expedition to
Red River, and in 1991, Battle in the Dark, an account
of the 1813 battle at Stoney Creek. The Role of the Lieutenant-
Governor appeared in 1992.

S
tanley served as Honorary Colonel of the New Brunswick Regiment
(1982-1992). Many years previously, he had received an Army
Efficiency Medal, but in 1992 he was awarded a C.D.; at 85,
he was almost certainly the oldest Canadian soldier so to be
decorated. Dr. Stanley is Honorary Ex-Cadet # H8899 of the
Royal Military College. He has 12 honorary degrees: Laval, Mount
Allison, St. Dunstan's, Alberta, Royal Military College, St.
Francis Xavier, University of New Brunswick, Dalhousie, Calgary,
Ottawa, Moncton, and St. Thomas. He is Professor Emeritus of both
the Royal Military College and Mount Allison University. He is a
Knight of Justice of the Order of St. John and holds the Victoria
Medal with bar of the Order. He is a Knight Grand Cross of the
Order of St. Lazarus and a Comendador of the Brazilian Order of
São Paulo. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,
the Royal Historical Society (London), the Company of Military
Historians, and the Heraldry Society of Canada. He is a Paul Harris
Fellow of Rotary International. He is a Life Member of the Royal
Canadian Legion, the New Brunswick Teachers' Association, the York-
Sunbury Historical Society, the Kingston Historical Society, the
United Empire Loyalists' Association of Canada, the Military
Institute of Fredericton, the Fredericton Garrison Club, and the
Union Club of Saint John. He had the distinction, while he was the
Queen's Representative in New Brunswick, of being made an honorary
citizen of the "Republic of Madawaska." In January 1994, he was
awarded a special certificate of merit by the Kingston Historical
Society; this was to mark the 100th anniversary of the Society and
to recognize Dr. Stanley's efforts in behalf of the Society and his
long devotion to their work and to historical research and
conservation.

D
r. Stanley's design of the Canadian maple leaf flag brought him
much public recognition. He
was the central figure in 1968 of a flag day parade at Stoney Creek,
Ontario. Twenty years later, he returned to help the community celebrate
what is now a well-established annual
Canadian flag festival. As a tribute to Dr. Stanley, the community
commissioned Elizabeth Holbrook to sculpt his bust, and a bronze casting
of her fine piece was formally installed in
the foyer of the splendid new city hall on that occasion. During the
25th anniversary celebrations of the maple leaf flag in 1990, he was
specially honoured in Ottawa and Toronto. In 1991, a bronze plaque
was erected at the Royal Military College to commemorate the Canadian
flag-R.M.C. connection and Dr. Stanley's role in the choice of design.
In October 1992, he was the special guest at flag raising ceremonies in
Winnipeg and was made an honorary citizen of that city. On Canada Day
1995, a plaque honouring his association with the flag was erected in
his home town of Sackville, New Brunswick; in 1996 a street was also
named for him.

Dr. Stanley passed away in his 96th year on 13 September 2002. After a traditional funeral at St. Paul's Anglican Church, Sackville, N.B., he was buried with full military honours in Sackville Cemetery.